Amazon has announced the availability of its In-App Purchasing API to its developer community. As this opens up the opportunity to monetize apps it has to be worth looking into.

A couple of days after news of the In-App Purchasing service for Kindle Fire and other Android devices was leaked by one of the beta testers, Amazon has made its official announcement.

The In-App Purchasing API gives developers opportunities to monetize their apps and gain revenue by offering digital content and subscriptions, such as in-game currency, expansion packs, upgrades, and magazine issues, for purchase within apps on Kindle Fire and other Android devices.

As Amazon puts it:

With the Amazon Appstore for Android In-App Purchasing solution, you can reach customers with existing accounts who have already bought apps, including millions of customers with Kindle Fire. Our simple, secure, and trusted 1-Click purchase experience is easy for customers to use, increasing conversion rates for purchases within your app. Plus, we designed our In-App Purchasing solution to be simple and easy to integrate so you can be up and running quickly.

If you register and sign in on Amazon's Developer Portal and click on the SDK tab you'll find documentation, API details, sample code, and tutorials. If you need more encouragement then this video has been included to promote the idea:

Microsoft Research does some interesting work in computational photography and has just released a new version of Image Composition Editor, a tool that can stitch photos together in amazing ways. [ ... ]